Earthquakes are a good sign from our planet. When our planets core cools down.....

The first thing you would notice is less volcanoes, and less earthquakes. Hey, that's fun -- but it's just the beginning. Slowly, wind and rain will begin to erode the Earth away. Very gradually, mountains will shrink. Grain by grain, they will crumble down, and get washed away by rain and rivers, into the sea. It will take hundreds of millions of years, that's the good news. But the bad news is that in the end, there will be no more land left! It's a bit strange to imagine, but when you level out all the land evenly across the globe, and smear it out onto the bottom of the sea, you would find nothing will be sticking out of the water. No continents, no rocks, no islands, not even a sand bank. All that will be gone forever.

Just moved to L.A. from Minneapolis a month ago. Everyone back home clutched their pearls, and whispered "earthquakes!" at me all wide-eyed-like.

So, this was my first. And yeah, my chair at work moved a little, too. Ooooh, horrors. That's SO much worse than being buried in filthy, cursed snow 6 months out of the year. I'm totally moving back home, and stuff. Boy, howdy.

MaxxLarge:Just moved to L.A. from Minneapolis a month ago. Everyone back home clutched their pearls, and whispered "earthquakes!" at me all wide-eyed-like.

So, this was my first. And yeah, my chair at work moved a little, too. Ooooh, horrors. That's SO much worse than being buried in filthy, cursed snow 6 months out of the year. I'm totally moving back home, and stuff. Boy, howdy.

You won't be missed! Have fun learning about 100 year events!

/can still drive through snow//can't drive through collapsed infrastructure

I have friends in the middle of the country who like to tease me about our earthquakes. Like they're at all comparable to tornadoes and blizzards... We've had exactly one earthquake in my lifetime that I would consider noteworthy: Loma Prieta.

Then I scare the shiat out of them with my Dad's story of the quake he was in while in the Navy. Link

Mr.Hawk:The quake was initially recorded as three separate temblors because a foreshock tricked seismograms into recording multiple quakes of multiple sizes, said Susan Hough, a USGS seismologist

That's hawt.

Griffith Observatory (here in Los Angeles) has a seismograph that visitors can see. The Fukushima earthquake was large enough that seismographs here in Los Angeles were going crazy. Not tiny blips, either; huge amplitudes on the seismograms.

Honest Bender:I have friends in the middle of the country who like to tease me about our earthquakes. Like they're at all comparable to tornadoes and blizzards...

Having grown up in the Midwest, I prefer tornadoes to earthquakes, largely because you have tornado warnings; no such warnings for earthquakes*.

That said, the few earthquakes I've felt since moving to California have been exceedingly mild and far from note-worthy.

*Actually, my landlord shared this story: He was chatting on the phone with his brother who was several miles away in downtown L.A. The brother says, "Hey, did you feel that? It was an earthquake." A few moments pass and then our landlord feels the shaking. So, in some sense, he did receive an "earthquake warning."

FizixJunkee:Mr.Hawk: The quake was initially recorded as three separate temblors because a foreshock tricked seismograms into recording multiple quakes of multiple sizes, said Susan Hough, a USGS seismologist

That's hawt.

Griffith Observatory (here in Los Angeles) has a seismograph that visitors can see. The Fukushima earthquake was large enough that seismographs here in Los Angeles were going crazy. Not tiny blips, either; huge amplitudes on the seismograms.

I keep seeing the word orgasm.Then its gone.then there it is again.then its gone.

So given that I just moved to the Bay Area from Michigan, how worried do I need to be about this stuff?

I mean if there's a big one, I'm farked and all my stuff is farked and that's just a thing, but how worried do I need to be about a 4.2 earthquake walking one of my monitors off the desk or knocking over my not-terribly stable bookshelf?

Deep Contact:Earthquakes are a good sign from our planet. When our planets core cools down.....

The first thing you would notice is less volcanoes, and less earthquakes. Hey, that's fun -- but it's just the beginning. Slowly, wind and rain will begin to erode the Earth away. Very gradually, mountains will shrink. Grain by grain, they will crumble down, and get washed away by rain and rivers, into the sea. It will take hundreds of millions of years, that's the good news. But the bad news is that in the end, there will be no more land left! It's a bit strange to imagine, but when you level out all the land evenly across the globe, and smear it out onto the bottom of the sea, you would find nothing will be sticking out of the water. No continents, no rocks, no islands, not even a sand bank. All that will be gone forever.

So given that I just moved to the Bay Area from Michigan, how worried do I need to be about this stuff?

I mean if there's a big one, I'm farked and all my stuff is farked and that's just a thing, but how worried do I need to be about a 4.2 earthquake walking one of my monitors off the desk or knocking over my not-terribly stable bookshelf?

It would take something closer to a 5.0 to walk your monitor off the desk, unless you are right on top of the epicenter and/or your monitor is right on the edge of the table.

FizixJunkee:Honest Bender: I have friends in the middle of the country who like to tease me about our earthquakes. Like they're at all comparable to tornadoes and blizzards...

Having grown up in the Midwest, I prefer tornadoes to earthquakes, largely because you have tornado warnings; no such warnings for earthquakes*.

That said, the few earthquakes I've felt since moving to California have been exceedingly mild and far from note-worthy.

*Actually, my landlord shared this story: He was chatting on the phone with his brother who was several miles away in downtown L.A. The brother says, "Hey, did you feel that? It was an earthquake." A few moments pass and then our landlord feels the shaking. So, in some sense, he did receive an "earthquake warning."

The "earthquake warning" your landlord's brother felt was the earthquake itself. Typically, earthquakes give off P-waves and S-waves. P-waves travel much faster than S-waves so they are felt soon.

Amidala:FizixJunkee: Honest Bender: I have friends in the middle of the country who like to tease me about our earthquakes. Like they're at all comparable to tornadoes and blizzards...

Having grown up in the Midwest, I prefer tornadoes to earthquakes, largely because you have tornado warnings; no such warnings for earthquakes*.

That said, the few earthquakes I've felt since moving to California have been exceedingly mild and far from note-worthy.

*Actually, my landlord shared this story: He was chatting on the phone with his brother who was several miles away in downtown L.A. The brother says, "Hey, did you feel that? It was an earthquake." A few moments pass and then our landlord feels the shaking. So, in some sense, he did receive an "earthquake warning."

The "earthquake warning" your landlord's brother felt was the earthquake itself. Typically, earthquakes give off P-waves and S-waves. P-waves travel much faster than S-waves so they are felt soon.

Deep Contact:Earthquakes are a good sign from our planet. When our planets core cools down.....

The first thing you would notice is less volcanoes, and less earthquakes. Hey, that's fun -- but it's just the beginning. Slowly, wind and rain will begin to erode the Earth away. Very gradually, mountains will shrink. Grain by grain, they will crumble down, and get washed away by rain and rivers, into the sea. It will take hundreds of millions of years, that's the good news. But the bad news is that in the end, there will be no more land left! It's a bit strange to imagine, but when you level out all the land evenly across the globe, and smear it out onto the bottom of the sea, you would find nothing will be sticking out of the water. No continents, no rocks, no islands, not even a sand bank. All that will be gone forever.

I don't think it will come to that. When the core cools that means it's slowing down. When it stops spinning, we lose our electromagnetic field that acts as a shield against solar wind. When that goes the atmosphere will be slowly eroded, and when that happens any water that isn't trapped under the surface will evaporate and also be blown out into space. That's also what many scientists theorize happened to Mars some time in the past.

Neondistraction:Deep Contact: Earthquakes are a good sign from our planet. When our planets core cools down.....

The first thing you would notice is less volcanoes, and less earthquakes. Hey, that's fun -- but it's just the beginning. Slowly, wind and rain will begin to erode the Earth away. Very gradually, mountains will shrink. Grain by grain, they will crumble down, and get washed away by rain and rivers, into the sea. It will take hundreds of millions of years, that's the good news. But the bad news is that in the end, there will be no more land left! It's a bit strange to imagine, but when you level out all the land evenly across the globe, and smear it out onto the bottom of the sea, you would find nothing will be sticking out of the water. No continents, no rocks, no islands, not even a sand bank. All that will be gone forever.

I don't think it will come to that. When the core cools that means it's slowing down. When it stops spinning, we lose our electromagnetic field that acts as a shield against solar wind. When that goes the atmosphere will be slowly eroded, and when that happens any water that isn't trapped under the surface will evaporate and also be blown out into space. That's also what many scientists theorize happened to Mars some time in the past.

We'll find ourselves on a kind of Mars the Second: a lifeless, airless, waterless, dead world -- with only some gullies and dried-up river beds remembering of its more lively past.

If that doesn't depress you, there's this: the freezing of the core seems quite inevitable. It isn't some speculative, weird phenomenon -- most experts agree the freeze-up is indeed going to happen one day.

If that doesn't depress you, there's this: the freezing of the core seems quite inevitable. It isn't some speculative, weird phenomenon -- most experts agree the freeze-up is indeed going to happen one day.